Kochi Prefecture's food & drink serves up classics and plenty of quirks

Eat and drink your way around Kochi Prefecture, one of the Japan's most productive breadbaskets where the cuisine and beverages cover the classics as well as the quirks. 

Osaka might claim to be “Japan’s kitchen,” Tokyo boasts all the Michelin stars and Hokkaido has great sushi in winter. As for Kochi Prefecture, on Japan’s smallest main island of Shikoku, well, it might be one of the lowest visited of all of Japan’s prefectures but plenty of people dine out on the region’s produce. Kochi Prefecture is one of the leading breadbaskets of Japan.

With 713 km of Pacific-facing coastline, an extensive network of rivers, steep mountain ranges and a mild and wet climate Kochi Prefecture boasts some of the most productive land in Japan -- centering on horticulture Kochi’s land productivity was 6.5 mil yen per hectare (compared to a national average of 2.43 mil yen per hectare), according to the Bank of Japan’s Kochi branch office estimates for fiscal 2009. So, that yuzu bobbing about in your winter bath, chances are it came from Kochi. Your ginger, myoga and eggplant, too.

And the people here are making efforts to keep it all clean, developing methods to minimize the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and taking advantage of natural predation as a method of pest control.   

In short, Kochi Prefecture produces a lot of great grub. 

Why Kochi Prefecture? Because earlier in 2019 Japanese former soccer great Hidetoshi Nakata was in town to promote his latest nihonshu-KitKat collaboration (the KitKat Mini Yuzu-shu Bijofu) and team City-Cost was hot on his heels with the hard-hitting KitKat questions.  

For the rest of the time we ate our way around some of Kochi Prefecture’s best foods and beverages, and those that come with interesting quirks

Katsuo no tataki

The most famous food in Kochi? The Pacific north-south Kuroshio “black” current giveth the fishing villages of Kochi Prefecture in the form of bonito (skipjack tuna, or “katsuo” in Japanese). And the fisher persons of the region taketh, via a form of pole-and-line fishing known as “ipponzuri” which involves the arduous task of plucking bonito out of the water one at a time. 

The toughness of the fisherperson’s task must be exacerbated by the seemingly endless appetite in Kochi for all-things katsuo, from dancing dried flakes to flavoring for ice cream. 

A favorite though is katsuo no tataki -- lightly seared bonito, sliced and served with spring onions, ginger and garlic.  

(Katsuo no tataki served at Kochi restaurant Kuroshio Kobo)

At Kuroshio Kobo restaurant in the town of Nakatosa, south of Kochi City, diners can sear their own bonito under the watchful eye of the experts. The brief, but hot and heavy, experience involves placing a slice of bonito on a kind of grill panel with a long handle, and holding it over raging flames fueled by dry straw in a process known as “warayaki tataki.”

Kuroshio Kobo sits on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. On a clear day the views could be stunning.  

Kuroshio Kobo: http://honjin.or.jp/en/index.html

For something a little more urbane, in downtown Kochi City, on the southern side of the Enokuchi River, Kochi Izariya is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with a complete renewal. Inside, the warm and trendy interior is a far cry from flames and dry straw but the menu at this classy izakaya keeps it true to the cuisine of former Tosa Province. 

All-you-can-drink courses start from 5,500 yen and include a serving of katsuo shio tataki -- salted seared bonito.  

Kochi Izariya: http://www.izariya.com/top_kochi.html

Katsuo soft ice cream

Of all the madness of flavors that Japan has thrown into its ice cream in the cause of marketing and Instagram likes, katsuo has to be one of the more desperate, perhaps along with wasabi. 

At Michi no Eki Nakatosa, a kind of road-trip rest stop / tourist center in the town of Nakatosa, we got our lips around a cone of katsuo soft to the tune of nearly 400 yen. The flavor (and off-white color) comes courtesy of katsuo dashi (stock) and a sprinkling of katsuobushi flakes provides the artistic flourish.  

                                          (Katsuo soft ice cream, Michi no Eki Nakatosa)

A Kochi food curiosity at best, but not as bad as it might sound. 

Michi no Eki Nakatosa: https://www.nakatosa.com/michinoekinakatosa/

Yuzu beer

There are a number of sophisticated things one can do with the citrus fruit yuzu, one of Kochi Prefecture’s most famous produce. Pouring the fruit’s juice into a jug of cheap larger probably isn’t one of them.   

(Yuzu fruit, not ripe for picking just yet, Kochi Prefecture)

Kochi City’s Hirome Market though, cares not for any frills and finery in the delivery of its dining and drinking experience. This brash and care-free market, lurking in the shadow of Kochi Castle, attracts an interesting mix of rugged locals, navy types, and curious tourists to its collection of over 60 stalls and eateries, any number of which have the beer on tap and a steady squeezing of yuzu juice to top it up with. It tastes like cheap beer, but with an interesting zest, and is a fun way to add a bit of liquid courage to your interactions with the Kochi locals. 

(Hirome Market in downtown Kochi City)

Of course, there are a myriad of other ways to take in your yuzu including jams, juices, syrups and even pepper paste, all of which can be found in Kochi Prefecture. 

Hirome Market: https://hirome.co.jp/

Yuzu liqueur

Kochi Prefecture might prove the exception to the thinking that decent sake cannot be produced in hot, sticky weather. Kochi Prefecture fair drips with humidity from rainy season through to autumn but they can still turn out fine sake here.

Kochi brewery Hamakawa Shoten, in the town of Tano in eastern Kochi Prefecture, was selected by Hidetoshi Nakata for his KITKAT Mini Yuzu-shu Bijofu on accounts of its delicious yuzushu, or yuzu liqueur. 

(Bijofu yuzu, Hamakawa Shoten, Kochi Prefecture)

The brewery’s Bijofu yuzu mixes freshly squeezed juice from Kochi-grown yuzu with liquid sugar which is then blended with the brewery’s signature Bijofu sake. It can be enjoyed straight, on the rocks or with soda, according to the brewery.

We drank it straight, and enjoyed it that way. While the serious sake connoisseur might be skeptical about something that to less knowledgeable palates might pass for an alcopop, the yuzu does lend to this liquor an element of the accessible that the purer stuff might lack.

Hamakawa Shoten: http://bijofu.jp/

Ryoma burger

Sakamoto Ryoma can probably, and posthumously, claim to be Kochi’s favorite son, if not all of Japan’s. Rarely has an object of study in any nation’s state-school history textbooks attained such rock star status as Ryoma. The 19th-century political reformer who helped usher Japan into its post-Shogunate, democratic era is a pop-culture pin up for a nation of Japanese teens, a poster boy for Kochi Prefectural tourism … the name behind a rather delicious burger served up at a store in downtown Kochi City. 

5019 Premium Factory “energy re-charge good foot forward” might sound like a chain of 24-hour gyms but it’s actually a groovy little eatery that opens out onto Kochi’s Central Park.

Inside, a friendly crew of custom black-t-shirted trendy young staff serves up a menu of Western comfort-food staples out of which jumps the Ryoma burger (龍馬バーガー). 

5019 Premium Factory’s Ryoma burger is a mouthful containing lettuce, tomato, egg, katsuobushi flakes, eggplant, cheese, pepper, and the burger bit. The great contraption is served in tin foil which diners will be instructed by staff to wrap over the burger and then squash down, making the whole thing a little more compact and stable such that it can be cut into more manageable pieces. Price: 900 yen. 

5019 Premium Factory: http://5019-premium.site/ 

Ryoma cappuccino

The quirk continues at Cafe Cocochi Coffee a clean and simple operation located by one of the exits at JR Kochi Station.  

If you can muster up the courage to say the words, “Ryoma cappuccino, kudasai,” and thus add a potentially embarrassing exclamation mark to any perceived box-ticking, tourist-in-town status then for around 470 yen you can have yourselves a hot dose of caffeine topped with some remarkable latte art that does a sterling job of depicting the great man himself. 

(Ryoma cappuccino, near JR Kochi Station)

The next hard part is turning his face into mush. 

Cafe Cocochi Coffee: http://www.jr-shikoku.co.jp/stc-kochi/cocochi.htm 

Ice crin

Ice crin “actually belongs to the group of shaved ice,” according to the Japan External Trade Organization Kochi, for all the world making ice-based snacks sound like the subject of a wildlife documentary.  

Ice crin is richer and more substantial than Japan’s shaved ice (kakigori) though, and based on the serving we had from a vendor overlooking Katsurahama beach it retains its flavor throughout rather than being reduced to just plain old frozen water after a few slurps.

                                        (Ice crin, Katsurahama, Kochi Prefecture)  

Not quite an ice cream then, but way better than kakigori (the Japanese version, not the delicious Taiwanese stuff), ice crin is something of a staple sweet in Kochi Prefecture, and although the popularity of the not-quite-ice-cream would appear to be unique to Kochi, the stuff itself actually isn’t, according to some sources.

Boshi pan

Killing time at Kochi Ryoma Airport isn’t an easy task, there’s little to do in either departures or arrivals. The spare minutes though, did give us a chance to chow down on some of Kochi’s boshi pan, or “hat bread.”

Boshi pan does what it says on the tin really, it’s bread in the shape of a hat.  

(Boshi pan, or "hat bread," Kochi Ryoma Airport)

According to some sources boshi pan was a mistake (and maybe remains that way for some). The hat-shaped bread first took form in around 1955, according to a post in Kochi-Marugoto. A baker preparing melon pan forgot to apply biscuit dough to one piece of bread before the fermenting process. After fermentation the biscuit dough was applied and it was sent to the oven. The end result after baking resembled the shape of a hat.  

After trial and error, the biscuit dough was replaced with castella dough to create the boshi pan that is baked today. 

Boshi pan can be found in any number of bakeries and confectioners in Kochi City.  

There are undoubtedly other of Kochi's best and curious foods and drinks that haven't made it into this article.  Above are those foods and drinks in Kochi Prefecture that we did consume.  If you have others that you think are among Kochi's best, let us know in the comments.